View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Calhoun, Institutional Archive of the Naval Postgraduate School Calhoun: The NPS Institutional Archive Faculty and Researcher Publications Faculty and Researcher Publications 2011 Insect Navigation and Communication in Flight and Migration: A Potential Model for Joining and Collision Avoidance in MAVs and Mobile Robots Fleet Control Ma, Zhanshan (Sam) http://hdl.handle.net/10945/43481 Insect Navigation and Communication in Flight and Migration: A Potential Model for Joining and Collision Avoidance in MAVs and Mobile Robots Fleet Control Zhanshan (Sam) Ma Axel W. Krings Computational Biology & Bioinformatics Lab, KIZ Computer Science Department Chinese Academy of Sciences, PRC & University of Idaho Computer Science Dept. & iBEST, University of Idaho, USA Moscow, ID 83843, USA Richard Millar Feng Wang Department of Systems Engineering Computer Science Department Naval Postgraduate School Kunming Univ. of Science and Technology Patuxent River NAS, MD, USA Kunming, 650223, P. R. China Jun Chao Kunming Institute of Zoology (KIZ) Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650223, P. R. China Abstract—The human being should be awarded the given the rich and advanced navigation and communication championship of navigation on the planet, on the virtues that technologies humans have already invented, such as they not only have invented and manufactured the compass, satellite-based GPS, the Internet, and cellular wireless GPS, aircraft, vessel, spacecraft, but also have demonstrated communication, why do we still expect to possibly learn exceptional non-instrumental navigation skills.12 The from insects? A simple answer is that the distributed and Austronesian expansion from the Asian mainland into the self-organized nature of insect navigation and Pacific performed by the Pacific navigators, who eventually communication systems makes it simple but very robust due populated the most remote islands of the Pacific about 4000 to their highly adaptive nature. For example, without years ago, is a vivid example (Wehner 1998). However, satellites, the GPS system will break down, but the animals, especially flying birds and insects are strong biological GPS of monarch butterfly can operate in natural contenders. Monarch butterflies can migrate up to 2000 conditions without even using a battery. miles from their reproductive sites in the eastern US and Canada to their over-wintering sites in the forests of Keywords: Insect navigation, insect flight and migration, Mexico, and it is postulated that they may possess a insect communication, micro-aerial vehicle (MAV), biological equivalent of a low-resolution GPS system that is joining and collision avoidance, quorum sensing. based on the magnetic field of the earth. In fact, even the long-legged ants (Cataglyphis fortis) in the Saharan desert TABLE OF CONTENTS use the dead-reckoning navigation strategy, which is attributed to the Polynesians, but the ants apparently have 1. INTRODUCTION............................................................2 acquired the capability much earlier, given the relative short 2. AN OVERVIEW OF INSECT NAVIGATION......................2 evolutionary history of humans. In this article, we briefly 3. INSECT COMMUNICATION IN FLIGHT AND review the state-of-the-art research on insect navigation and MIGRATION—DANCE LANGUAGE....………………...5 communication used in flight and communication, with the 4. JOINING AND AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR IN INSECTS…...7 objective to inspire cross-disciplinary studies in aerospace 5. EXISTING AND PERSPECTIVE APPLICATIONS...............8 engineering, biology and computer science. After a brief 6. GLOSSARY.…………………………………………..11 review, we overview and identify seven cross-disciplinary 7. REFERENCES.………………………………………..12 research topics that may draw on inspirations from insect BIOGRAPHIES ...……………………………………..14 navigation and communication in flight and migration. These topics include: ants colony inspired swarm 1. INTRODUCTION intelligence, honeybee inspired group decision-making, insect sociobiology, MAV/mobile robot flight control and Studies of insect and bird flights have generated significant remote control of insect flights, optimal migration strategy, insights and applications in aerospace engineering and Quorum sensing, and joining and collision avoidance for mobile robotics. However, there have been few studies on MAV fleet control. An interesting question one may pose is: the potential application of the communication “protocols” and mechanisms utilized by insects in long-distance flight 1 978-1-4244-7351-9/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE and migration to engineering problems. In biology, the 2 IEEEAC paper#1796, Version do, Updated 2011:01:15 1 problem of insect communication in flight and migration is individuals. Interestingly, the study of locusts demonstrates often approached from the individual perspective, rather the potential application of complexity science theory such than from a group or population perspective. For example, as percolation modeling. the recent study on monarch butterflies, which can migrate up to 2000 miles seasonally and is one of a handful of the We postulate that insect migration could be controlled by most extensively studied migrant insects, reveals that this some kind of distributed, self-organizing, and adaptive butterfly possesses the molecular capability to sense the mechanisms, regardless of the different mechanism at the magnetic field of earth and therefore can use geomagnetic individual level, because their limited cognitive capability fields during their spectacular long-distance migration. and lack of communication language do not allow them to However, little is known about possible communication or develop complex, centralized control systems such as we interactions between the butterflies during their migration. humans adopt in aerial traffic control. Yet, monarch Can we assume that the swarm of the butterflies is self- butterflies apparently demonstrate extraordinary feat in organized during the migration? Are there any additional conducting themselves to undergo the long-distance communication protocols and mechanisms among the migration process. If such protocols and mechanisms can individuals to coordinate the migration process? be formally defined with mathematical models, they can be applied to coordinate the fleet of MAVs with missions that are too dangerous for manned flight vehicles to perform. Bee dancing as a communication language is another One potential application is joining and collision avoidance extensively studied field and has inspired several important control for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV and MAV) and computing algorithms for group formation and task mobile robots fleets. allocation in scheduling theory and computational intelligence, but has not been applied to flight control The remainder of this article is organized as follows: communications in engineering. Besides the two previous Sections 2-4 presents an overview of the studies on insect examples of Monarch butterfly and bees, a third extensively navigation and communication during flight and migration, studied insect is migrant locusts, whose switch or phase including the study on joining and collision avoidance transition from solitary lifestyle to massive swarm has been behaviors conducted in entomological research. Section 5 explained with percolation theory. reviews existing applications of the inspirations from insect navigation and communication to aerospace engineering and The study of animal navigation has been justifiably mobile robotics. This section also presents a perspective on dominated by the study of birds. The combination of innate performing cross-disciplinary research that is tailored to and learned behaviors makes the navigation of birds generate inspirations for the applications to MAV and extremely flexible (Wiltschko & Wiltschko 2009). Birds can mobile robotics controls. utilize a wide array of cues from the environment and, in the meantime, their learned mechanisms are also perfectly 2. AN OVERVIEW OF INSECT NAVIGATION adapted to the local situation. The study of insect navigation has benefited hugely from comparative studies with its 2.1. Overview of insect navigation counterpart in ornithology, but the long-standing doubts to the learning capacity of insects have hindered more serious Although the study of insect navigation can be traced back studies on the role of insect learning in their navigation and as early as 1900s, a first comprehensive entomological communication. Although research on insect learning per se review of this field appears to have been done by has made enormous advances in the last few decades (e.g., Mittelstaedt (1962), who focused on the key capabilities of Dukas 2008), the study of insect navigation with a learning insect orientation from a modern control theory perspective. dimension is largely limited to the honeybee dance Mittelstaedt (1962) believed that there is a control system in language, and a coherent theory on insect navigation, the body of insects that controls the spatial relations of communication, and learning is still missing. insects—orientation, which is not limited to the flight orientation. That review was more like a perspective on the Some of the navigation principles and mechanisms used by control of insect orientation from an engineering viewpoint insects (especially the dragonfly and locust) have already than on then existing biological studies, perhaps because been